We began our brainstorming process by grabbing one of the whiteboards in the MADD center and made a list of themes and mechanics that we enjoyed. As we compiled the mechanics list, we saw that we had trended towards board games that involved machine building, asymmetry, and competitiveness. With these bulletpoints in mind, we decided to play two games for inspiration/criticism: Scythe and Terraforming Mars.
The biggest thing we learned from Scythe is that while there is a good amount of engine building and asymmetry, the game gets really bogged up in the mechanics and there is a big learning curve to even understand what the goal of the game is and how to counterplay the other people on the board. After playing this game, we went back to our drawing board and added that we wanted it to be simple enough that it could be learned fairly quickly, but still had a decent mastery curve. With this in mind, we went into Terraforming Mars. We did a similar system: we played the game, then critiqued it and went back to the drawing board to refine our idea. After we finished playing Terraforming Mars, we found that while it was a fun engine builder, there really wasn’t a ton of player interaction, and it kind of just felt like each player was doing their own thing and then someone won at the end. We agreed that counterplay is a game is really fun, and so we decided to add player interaction to our list. At that point, our list was:
– Engine Builder
– Asymmetrical
– Competitive
– Easy to Learn, Hard to Master
– Direct Player Interaction
With these five points in mind, we set out to design our pitch. At one point, someone suggested a game that has teams, that way players can work together while also competing to win. With this in mind, we thought it would be best to design a game that could be played with only 2 players, and the players beyond that would join one of the teams. This is where we began baking in our other ideas. We decided that we could add asymmetry by having each of the sides do completely different things, and maybe even implement the engine building as the core mechanic of one side, while the other side is another theme entirely, possibly worker placement. Somehow they would be facing directly head to head, allowing for periods of direct competition (combat? maybe, we weren’t sure on theming yet).
At this point, we decided that it would be best to start forming a narrative theme to influence the rest of the game’s shape. We talked through a couple of different ideas, but TTRPG players to the core, we all really enjoyed the idea of some kind of DnD-style dungeon, but one player spends their budget to create the party, equip them with weapons and armor, and form their marching order to take on the dungeon, while the other player would construct the dungeon, and spend their budget on traps, monsters, and deception. We really began to like this idea, and expanded from there, making sure it hit all of the marks that we wanted to hit.
We ran into one small snag: we didn’t really know what the win- or game-end condition was, and even after thinking it through for a while, we didn’t really find anything that we liked as a permanent solution. We came up with a couple of ideas, but going into the pitch, we recognize that this is the weakest part and will be the first thing we focus on when designing the game. In class, we are hoping for guidance from Ash and Bruno (and Eren if they’re there) as to how we can refine this theme, and maybe even just find inspiration from whatever board game(s) we’re assigned for next week’s class. Other than this though, we really enjoyed the idea of this kind of asymmetry, as it’s something that none of us have really played before and it seemed like an interesting design challenge. We recognize that we are probably committing to a lot more work than is necessary for a passing grade in the class, but we also recognize that the challenge means that a polished end result will be something that we are proud of. We’re all really looking forward to working on this board game over the next 3 weeks.
Process Post Update
Coming out of our pitch feedback, we decided to change our design to be somewhat more cooperative, while also allowing for competition and counterplay. We realized that with this in mind, we liked the idea of a 2-4 player game more than our initial strictly 2 player one. So, we set off designing. We began our physical design process by getting together and brainstorming actual components for our game. As an asymmetric game where we wanted players to explore a dungeon semi-cooperatively, the obvious fantasy inspiration as to how we could differentiate the roles from each other was by making different DnD-inspired characters. We decided on these seven:
– Warrior (a character good at fighting monsters and being strong)
– Thief (a character good at sneaking and messing with traps)
– Mage (a squishy spellcaster)
– Necromancer (a wizard specializing in death magic)
– Tactician (a strategist specializing in striking where it is most effective)
– Artificer (an inventor and worker)
– Looter (someone who likes loot)
Then, we had the actual challenge of figuring out how the characters would be interesting. Pretty early on, we were inspired by Root’s player boards and figured that that was the easiest way to track each different character’s abilities. But what would be on the board? We decided that players would have 3 different trackers on their board: Health Points, Stamina, and Energy. Health Points would be used to track a player’s health throughout their combats in the dungeon. As we didn’t want players to use dice in combat, we added Stamina as a way for players to choose to push themself in a critical moment, where it would make the difference between killing a monster or not. Finally, we added Energy, which was the way that characters use their abilities. Originally, this was exclusive to the Mage, being called Mana and being the way that the Mage tracked their magical energy. However, it felt weird that only the Mage had a limitation on its abilities, so we decided that we would change Mana to Energy and make it be the thing that allows all characters to use their abilities. We also had trouble finding enough item-themed mechanics to differentiate the Artificer and the Looter, so we combined them into the Loot Goblin.
We decided that for each character’s abilities, they would have a passive benefit, a 1-cost benefit, a 2-cost benefit, and a 3-cost benefit. The 3-cost would be the most expensive but the most powerful. Players are able to choose whether or not they spend all of their Energy on their first turn, or instead choose to spread it out.
After we had these down, we had to come up with the abilities themselves. We built using a semi-chaotic approach, throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what would stick. We made a chart and jumped around each of the classes making abilities for them as we had ideas for them, and then tweaked as we went along. As we built, though, we realized that some abilities would be dependent on interacting with the items, monsters, and traps that were in each of the rooms. Therefore, we needed a way to determine rules for handling those mechanics. We decided to give players four stats: Attack, Speed, Perception, and Sneak. Attack would be used to attack, Perception would be used to see traps, Speed would be used to determine how many rooms a player could move through on their turn, and Sneak would be used to sneak past monsters. In our working document, we made a chart where we could lay out each character’s scores, health points, and abilities. In finishing these, our game was in a pretty mechanically finished state.
The only thing left to still determine was how the players would win/lose. A group loss was pretty obvious: if all players faint, the game ends with a loss for all. But how do players win? We ultimately landed on the idea of some kind of victory point system, which we ended up naming Prestige. When certain conditions are met, players could get Prestige Tokens and at the end of the game, all Prestige would be counted up and the player with the most would win. So then what are those ways? Well, we thought of a few separately, and then thought on some other games that we enjoy that use a system similar to this and figured that maybe it was best if players could have multiple ways of doing it, so we decided to include multiple of them together. To get Prestige players could:
– complete Goal Cards, which are secret cards that have personal game goals for the player
– not use their Stamina (encourages considering whether to use their Stamina)
– gain loot with better value
With a pretty much concrete idea for the concept of our game, we assigned roles, with the goal to meet the day before class to finalize mechanical touches as well as complete our physical game pieces and playtest the game before class. During our playtest, we found that the game was overall too easy and some things felt clunky, such as players knowing whether they have succeeded on a check automatically, with only having the option to spend stamina to help them. We left that playtest thinking about how we could change our game, and an hour before class on Thursday, we decided to add dice to our game, something we had initially decided against. Surprisingly, though, it worked out really well and during the silent playtest the dice added another overall layer to the game; it was overall more enjoyable than our first playtest. More updates coming soon with other details from the silent playtest and the changes we have made as a result of it. The second version of our game is a wide swing, and we hope it pays off!
Process Post Update 2
During class last week we got a series of notes that really helped us with our game and led to us changing up quite a bit. These changes include:
- Completely scrapping a stamina mechanic we originally had that allowed players to heal, as it was rarely used and felt too good to use
- Cutting out a class-based speed statistic, changing it instead so that each player could just move twice
- How players added cards to a room in the dungeon. Previously a player would enter a room and each other player would add a card that included either a monster, a trap, or loot. There were several issues with this method, the main one being that it felt bad to give loot to your competitors
- Added several things to the rules that were missing (including things as simple as choosing a meeple), and changed others
- Completely changed up how each of the classes worked, including moving away from a system that involved each class having abilities that cost 0-1-2-3 “energy” and moving to more asymmetric playstyles
- Changed the way that players earn victory points (“Prestige”) to be more balanced and unique for each class
- Many other small tweaks and improvements to how things worked
We met a few hours after class, and later that weekend, to discuss primarily how we wanted to change up the process of exploring the dungeon and revamp each of the classes, including giving them each their own Prestige-earning mechanic.
We landed on a similar but heavily edited version of exploration that involved each room having a monster and “event” card (such as a trap or buff) played in the room automatically, and allowing each player to then add an event card if they wished to help or sabotage their fellow players.
For each of the classes, following hours of brainstorming, collaboration, and disagreements, we landed on the following designs:
- Warrior: earns Prestige through killing monsters, and gains abilities through armor and weapon upgrades using Materials
- Thief: earns Prestige through sneaking past monsters, and also gains abilities through armor and weapon upgrades but these upgrades are overall weaker as they start with more abilities to begin with, focused around disarming traps and sneaking
- Mage: earns Prestige by collecting Materials and exchanging them (flavored as spell components), or can alternatively use them to learn more and better spells
- Tactician: earns Prestige by exploring new rooms, and because they earn Prestige so much quicker they then spend it to use abilities that allow them to place themselves into more strategic positions, debuff enemies, disadvantage their opponents, and more
- Necromancer: earns Prestige by sacrificing their undead thralls which they raise using their own health points. Can get upgrades to their thralls
- Loot Goblin: earns Prestige through collecting consumable loot, and their abilities and upgrades center around ways to get more and better loot
On Monday, with our new class designs in hand, we held a playtest. It went badly. Badly in the sense that it revealed a litany of flaws in our design and especially in our rules, but of course, the upside was that it meant we could make our game better! Most of the changes after this playtest centered around completely redoing our rules to make them as clear as possible and continuing to balance our hero classes, which severely needed it. Other major changes included:
- Adding a (greatly improved) speed mechanic back in as we discovered several exploits that allowed for much greater movement than intended
- Removing rooms that had chasms in them, as only some classes were easily able to cross them and it felt like an unnecessary roadblock for some but not others
- Added in rolls for sneaking and disabling traps, which we already did with attacks as our previous system allowed heroes with high stealth or perception to essentially never have to worry about not being able to sneak or about being hit by traps
- Added in new forms of collaboration, as previously there was no incentive for players to ever cooperate in our cooper-petitive (cooperative + competitive) game
We got to work making these changes and on Wednesday we held another playtest which went much better, while still revealing some flaws and areas we needed to work on. The changes after this test were mainly focused on more (but less major) rule edits and clarifications, and a ton more hero balancing changes surrounding their stats, abilities, and the way they earned Prestige as basically all of the classes felt noticeably over or underpowered in at least one of those categories, if not, all three.
It’s been a busy week of game design, but we’re looking forward to more playtests soon as we continue to balance, edit, and refine Dungeon Delvers!
Process Post Update 3
Our final in-class playtests went very well but did reveal a couple of tweaks that we still wanted to make. This primarily consisted of yet more rule clarifications, particularly focused on how exploring the dungeon worked as well as some movement-centered mechanics. We made these changes but still felt a little bit iffy about some things, specifically the balance and flavor of some of the class, with Mage, Necromancer, and Loot Goblin feeling like they needed the most tweaks- so we scheduled a meeting with Ashlyn to go over our major concerns and bounce some ideas off of her.
Changes made after this meeting:
- Wizards get prestige whenever they cast a spell to fulfill more of the spell-slinging fantasy, but spells can potentially backfire now to add a balance
- Necromancers sacrificing minions for prestige felt odd, so now they get prestige for resurrecting minions.
- Loot goblins get prestige every time loot enters their hand (the theme in these first three changes is that we wanted to encourage each class to play to their core mechanic so they could win in unique ways)
- Removing the wall smash ability from the warrior and the tactician as it was rarely useful
- Added a turn-order mechanic based around the person in last place going first each round, as the same person always going first felt strange and a little unbalanced
- Clarified yet more things in the rules
After this meeting we got to work on our final edits. This primarily focused on the items listed above, along with some edits to the other classes, final rules edits, and creating a “Game End” board that allows players to track the events that eventually lead to the end of the game.
